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Philosopher Charles Hartshorne wrote a book in 1973 entitled Born To Sing.

As an expert ornithologist, Hartshorne conclued that, although birds warble and tweet in part to protect their territory and find mates, they also sing because “they like it.”

Birds, like humans, are guided by a sense of esthetics, which gives them enjoyment, Hartshorne taught. By the time of his death in 2000 at age 103, Hartshorne’s radical theory was gaining traction in ornithology and philosophy.

Many have come to believe animals are more akin to humans than previously believed – and that animals are motivated by possibilities greater than the brutish fight for survival.

“Birds sing a lot and it takes a great deal of energy. They have a real urge to sing, even when it’s dangerous because it gives their location to predators. I can only assume singing must make them feel good,” agrees Dick Cannings, author of An Enchantment of Birds (Greystone).

The noted Okanagan birder’s sentiments echo a paradigm shift occurring in more intellectual circles, where many are concluding some force in the universe lures all living things towards enjoyment. Towards happiness.

How can living things plug into this universal force for happiness?

If birds might be “born to sing” because they enjoy it, what are humans born to do? Many thinkers, like Aristotle and the Dalai Lama, maintain the ultimate purpose of humans is to flourish.

Yet, even if there is an entity that calls all sentient beings to enjoyment, it’s easier said than done.

In affluent North America, many believe happiness comes when you “have it all;” money, prestige, family, friends, fashionable clothes and lots of sex. That was the theme of a controversial article this summer in Atlantic Monthly on the advance of women.

In difficult times, however, others say the quest to “have it all” is a consumer-culture dead end. The respected Christian Science Monitor ran a rebuttal arguing happiness actually floats to the surface when humans realize they “have enough.”

The path to happiness is not clearly marked.

We’ll explore some approaches offered by a Vancouver follower of the Dalai Lama, admirers of Hartshorne, a biologist and a UBC specialist in Greek philosophy.

Happiness relies on ethics

Many university philosophers ignore questions about big things such as happiness -- instead focussing on logical abstractions, existential absurdity or language puzzles.

But UBC’s Sylvia Berryman was drawn to early Greek thinkers such as Aristotle precisely because they explored subjects relevant to the real world; to the art of living.

Aristotle had a great deal to say about happiness in the fourth-century BC., which is often called the Axial Era. At the time Buddha was developing his idea that “life is suffering” and the way to end the pain is by “detaching” from desires, Aristotle was providing his own route.

Aristotle was in some ways similar to Buddha, Jesus and many other spiritual masters. Like them, he would have criticized the version of happiness sold by today’s marketers, whom Berryman says “manipulate” people, confusing happiness with success.

“It’s an insidious notion of happiness, based largely on what’s valuable in other people’s eyes,” says Berryman, who spends months each year in Guatemala, sometimes with students and on Habitat for Humanity house-building projects.

Aristotle promoted a middle path to contentment.

He could not accept that happiness lies in extreme pleasure and hedonism; in food, drink, sex and Whistler condos, which Berryman calls “mere recreation .... Aristotle didn’t think you could be a complete rascal and flourish.”

Yet Aristotle also believed “you wouldn’t want to be a slave” who had nothing. Aristotle’s pragmatic streak led him to think humans, to get a crack at happiness, need a certain amount of possessions and security. Not to mention good luck.

And, even though Aristotle strongly supported ethical behavior, Berryman says he did not go nearly so far as the ancient Stoics, who claimed those who always did the perfectly moral thing “could be happy on the (torture) rack.”

Happiness, pleasure and morality were all part of a package for Aristotle. He thought well-being could ultimately be found through living a virtuous life; of compassion and social relatedness.

For her part, Berryman often finds what she considers “holistic” and purpose-filled enjoyment in her volunteer work in Guatemala, where she “helps people help themselves in a meaningful way.”

Although Guatemalans have suffered through a “horrific civil war,” Berryman says many manage to live in close community with integrity and contentment -- far removed from “the compartmentalization of the modern urban industrial life.”

How to develop the skill of happiness

University of B.C. positive psychologist Elizabeth Dunn grows nervous about the first of the four noble truths of Buddhism – which claims: “Life is suffering.”

In her research, Dunn has found that downbeat existential stance to be “counterproductive to happiness.”

The only way such a dour outlook can be effective, Dunn says, is if it motivates people to be kind.

There is little doubt some austere religious people, not to mention depressed secular ones, can focus excessively on the hardest things of life. But the Dalai Lama is one Buddhist who remains hopeful, who zeroes in on happiness.

That’s in part because the Dalai Lama follows the Mahayana tradition, which teaches that anyone who approaches enlightenment must first commit to being a “boddhisatva,” one who helps all others achieve liberation.

Vancouver’s Victor Chan has known the Dalai Lama for four decades. He’s been there when the famous Buddhist routinely arises at 3:30 a.m. to pray and meditate.

How does this bring the Tibetan leader happiness? Much like monks from Christian or Jewish traditions, Chan says the Dalai Lama contemplates “a genuine concern for the suffering of others.”

“The Dalai Lama believes that cultivating compassion and altruism is the most effective path to genuine happiness. He calls it ‘wise-selfish,’” says Chan, who has brought the Tibetan spiritual leader to Vancouver.

Chan, whose new book, The Wisdom of Compassion, comes out this fall, acknowledges it can sound like a “platitude” when the Dalai Lama says “the purpose of life is to be happy and seek contentment.”

But Chan has been pleasantly surprised to discover it works to be wise-selfish.

To put scientific meat on this spiritual and moral theory, the Dalai Lama welcomes laboratory research into happiness.

Chan notes how the Dalai Lama’s friend, Buddnist monk Matthieu Ricard, was once dubbed ‘the happiest man on Earth” by a British newspaper because researchers discovered parts of his brain were remarkably at rest after meditation.

As UBC economist John Helliwell notes approvingly, the French monk, a former scientist, teaches that happiness is three things:

It is a trait. A state of mind. And a skill.

In other words, as a trait, some people might have a genetic predisposition to a cheerful temperament. As a state of mind, some find it easier to cultivate a pleasant mood.

But most importantly, as a skill, happiness is learnable.

And both the Dalai Lama and Aristotle teach that one way to happiness is through disciplining emotions.

“The Dalai lama treats emotions like ripples on the surface of an ocean,” Chan says. “They go up and down, but deep within the ocean there is calm and equanimity. When you have peace of mind, nothing disturbs you much.”

In a similar way, Aristotle taught people to moderate extreme ups and downs through practicing the Golden Mean with their emotions, for instance by avoiding being either too fearful or too courageous, which can turn to rashness.

By developing character virtues, and by feeling emotions to the proper degree, Aristotle taught that humans could overcome even grave misfortune - while embodying a “good spirit.”

Aligning with universal happiness

There’s more to the philosophy of happiness than balancing emotions, however.

Happiness could provide a clue to the actual makeup of the universe, say evolutionary philosophers. They’re convinced a lure toward enjoyment is embedded throughout the natural world.

Hartshorne taught that all living things are drawn to enjoyment. And Aristotle said all creatures, like birds, are most satisfied when they’re fulfilling their purpose. The Dalai Lama puts it very simply: The purpose of human life is happiness.

To say the least, however, this has not been the dominant Western scientific materialistic worldview. Evolutionary philosophers sidestep the kind of reductionistic thinking often taught in universities. Many materialists believe life is basically meaningless, or absurd.

But they’re not the only ones who have done a disservice to happiness. Many early Western theologians also played their negative role. They portrayed God as a cosmic moralist, whipping people into obedience through fear of divine punishment.

Augustine, the influential fourth-century Christian theologian, taught that humans’ duty was to obey God on this suffering-filled Earth. Happiness, he said, was only to be found in heaven.

But that hard Western worldview is declining. Some Jewish, Christian and secular philosophers are boldly declaring all of reality, at the microscopic level, is energy, or “occasions of experience,” which can feel some degree of enjoyment.

Some of these philosophers describe divinity as the lure to greater complexity and beauty -- as the call toward greater enjoyment. This sacred entity is sometimes compared to Hinduism’s Brahmin, who is said to elicit infinite enjoyment, or bliss.

Sometimes this emerging worldview is called panexperientialism. It’s adherents do not encourage individuals to just go out and party – to pursue pleasure just for themselves.

In a world of limited resources, they want all individuals to have a chance at finding enjoyment, without hurting what the U.S. Declaration of Independence calls everyone’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

Somewhat like the Dalai Lama and Aristotle, the Scottish philosopher David Hume said humans’ attempts to achieve happiness should be judged by how they impact the happiness of others.

Likewise, in evolutionary philosophy, enjoyment is celebrated. Morality stands in the service of happiness. “God wants our enjoyment to be such as to increase the enjoyments of others,” writes John Cobb Jr.

When it comes to the question of how to find happiness in difficult times, evolutionary thinkers take into account that it can, indeed, be a tough world. Through chance and wrongdoing, bad things happen to good people.

Yet suffering does not rule out enjoyment. They can be complementary, yin and yang. The ultimate aim for many philosophers is a larger kind of happiness, which can also be called beauty – where pain and enjoyment often dwell together.

subhed here

For complicated creatures like humans, happiness is elusive. But we may not be that different in kind from birds.

Both species seek enjoyment. And they often do it in groups; with family and friends. As human musicians share their melodies, could birds sing in part because other creatures enjoy it?

Biologists like Cannings don’t rule out the uplifting possibility. “I get happy listening to any bird or watching any animal. It comes out of appreciation and empathy,” he says. “The happiness comes from a sense of interconnectedness.”

Which birdsong, to be specific, makes Cannings most happy?

The “ethereal” sound of the West Coast’s Swainson’s Thrush, he answers.

“It just sits in the shadows and sings. It’s song just spirals upwards, utterly complex and beautiful.”

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From birds to humans, happiness may be embedded in evolutionary process

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